SAG nominee profile: ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ stunt ensemble may swim to victory to make up for first film’s snub

Sam Eckmann
·4 min read
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“Avatar” took the world by storm in 2009, reaping an unprecedented box office haul and scoring three Oscar wins. But despite its strong performance with audiences and awards bodies, the SAG Awards snubbed it completely. Fourteen years later, the sequel “Avatar: The Way of Water” is not only lighting up the box office again, but it scored a SAG nomination for Best Film Stunt Ensemble when the original could not. Will SAG voters go a step further by rewarding the biggest film of the year with a win?

At this year’s ceremony, “The Way of Water” stunt team is nominated alongside the performers from “The Batman,” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” “Top Gun: Maverick,” and “The Woman King.” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and “The Woman King” are the only films from this list to score additional SAG nominations, with acting bids for Angela Bassett and Viola Davis, respectively.

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It’s difficult to pin down voting trends in the stunt categories because SAG only started doling out this prize in 2007, but paying attention to global box office is a good rule of thumb. At last year’s ceremony, “No Time To Die” had the largest worldwide box office of the crop of nominees. It was the fourth highest grossing movie of the year at $774 million, well ahead of “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” the next highest grossing nominee at $432 million. Other recent stunt winners follow this same trend with “Wonder Woman 1984,” “Avengers: Endgame,” and “Wonder Woman” all earning the top worldwide gross out of their respective nominee lineups.

Gold Derby’s exclusive combined odds currently place “Avatar: The Way of Water” in fourth place in the Best Film Stunt Ensemble category, but the box office factor may prove those odds wrong. In a year where movie theaters have routinely posted closing notices as they struggle to get butts in seats, “Avatar” has been one of the few bright spots. The film closed out 2022 with over $2.2 billion in worldwide gross. That’s nearly a full billion dollars more than the number two movie of the year, “Top Gun: Maverick,” which most pundits have in first place when it comes to the SAG vote.

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While “Maverick” has impressive flight sequences, the stunts in “Avatar” focus more on fight scenes and other displays of physical prowess that typically win this category. It’s possible that SAG overlooked the first “Avatar” film due to its heavy use of CGI, but “The Way of Water” has released plenty of peeks behind the scenes to showcase the immense amount of physical work that these performers endured. They spent countless hours underwater, swimming against wave machines. They pulled off highly choreographed physical brawls, often having to rely on their imaginations to create the world around them. This work is most on display in the movie’s epic finale: the stunt team executes an enormous fight scene as two armies clash, before navigating treacherous underwater terrain as characters become trapped in a sinking vessel. They may be digitally costumed as blue Na’vi, but don’t be surprised if this hard-working ensemble pulls off an upset victory at the SAG Awards.

The films that have prevailed in this category most recently are “No Time to Die” (2022), “Wonder Woman 1984” (2021), “Avengers: Endgame” (2020), and “Black Panther” (2019).

This article is a part of Gold Derby’s “SAG Awards nominee profile” series spotlighting the 2023 contenders in film and TV.

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